Andy Weir, the author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, has been telling Inverse about the fan fiction he has been carrying around for years, and one of the ideas is a Star Trek and Star Wars crossover which he calls, with admirable restraint, “Star Star”. The interview, with Ryan Britt for Inverse’s Fan Fiction issue, went up earlier this month and has been doing the rounds again on X.
The mechanism is neat. The Genesis device going off at the end of The Wrath of Khan tears a hole in reality, and so does the Death Star blowing up in A New Hope. The two rifts become the Yavin/Mutara wormhole, and the Enterprise duly goes through. On the Trek side, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader tumble out in their ships. The Enterprise picks up Vader, whose cybernetic implants horrify the crew, and Dr McCoy rebuilds the man in sickbay until he is Anakin again. When the Enterprise goes the other way, Spock turns up as a Force ghost, having been dead since Khan, and Sulu finds he has Jedi abilities he has been far too modest to mention.
There is a good deal to enjoy here. McCoy, a man who protested every transporter beam, is conducting a full restoration on the Dark Lord of the Sith and has presumably told him to stop being so dramatic. Spock, the Vulcan least likely to approve of an afterlife, has to put up with one that runs on midi-chlorians.
The lawyers at Paramount and Disney would need a very long lunch, but fandom has changed reality before. In 1976 NASA’s first space shuttle was due to be called Constitution, until nearly 100,000 Star Trek fans wrote to the White House and President Ford directed that it be named Enterprise instead. If fans can get a space shuttle renamed by post, a wormhole should be well within their capabilities.
Weir declined to describe the Star Trek show he has actually pitched, saying he wants to pitch it again, so Paramount may yet hear from him. The rest of the interview is a treat for anyone who likes fandom with a bit of British eccentricity stitched in. His Doctor Who idea involves the Meddling Monk, who, after the Time War, builds a paradox engine to keep himself alive and has spent centuries nudging England towards resembling Gallifrey, which would explain all the lords, ladies and lord presidents. Weir conceded that this would retcon British history rather than Doctor Who. He also wrote a Ready Player One story, “Lassero”, which Ernest Cline declared canon, and he says he welcomes Project Hail Mary fan fiction wholeheartedly. A deluxe edition of the novel is due on 1 December.
Kirk, presumably, would have charmed half the Jedi Council before the first commercial break.
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